As a former resident of a monastery, I revisited the protective isolationism, spiritual peace, personal sacrifice, and disdain for every intrusive event. It was well written, scholasticaly researched, and imaginatively told. Although I found the pace of the story was slow to a fault, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. This is a great setting for mystery and historical reinterpretation. The presence of the petty self righteous individuals who hold your soul, your life, and your peaceful death, in their whimsical hands, haunted the unstable. No wonder this life was, and to a lesser degree still is, a tangle of ritual, rumor, superstition, and petty intrigue. It is from these musings that the drama of monastic life unfolds. Some live life as voyeurs, intimately parsing each imagined act until they believe they have experienced and yet they have no anchor in reality. I enjoyed it that much, but when compared to other historic mystery thrillers like "Dark Matter" by Philip Kerr or "The Tournament" by Matthew Reilly, it falls a little short. I still plan on buying and reading the rest of this series. Maybe 10 to 12 thousand words less and this book is a lot more streamlined and readable. Ms Koulais is a much better writer than I could ever be, but my advice is to cut, or cut down on some of the more wordy and tangled parts. Overall, I wanted to give it four stars for what the author attempted to do and almost succeeded.
The very end with the separation of our two protagonist was well done.
Perhaps that's realistic, but it impacted my enjoyment. The killer was disclosed, but that was neither satisfying or that interesting. Then just past the 300th page, things started to not only slow down but became meandering. However, nothing that would have changed my initial prediction. Things were moving along quite nicely with a few digressions and convoluted scenes, especially the dreams. It had: interesting characters, an engaging mystery, suspense and a feel for the late Middle Ages. For over the first half of this book, I was thinking this is a solid four stars, as it was really enjoyable. The "Temple of the Grail" is a prime example.
More and more I find I agonize over rating my good reads.
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